588 REPORT—-1883. 
the line be drawn in physical geography between the past and the present? It is 
as undefined as the line which separates species from genera. 
An enormous interval of time must have elapsed, during which the cold was 
increasing and the glaciers advancing, and during which the rivers were dis- 
tributing the consequent waste over the lower country, spreading out the more or 
less coarse material, sands and clays, in broad fans in front of all the great gorges. 
Then came the first period of contraction of the glaciers, with many oscillations. Of 
this we have the evidence in the moraines of Ivrea, Maggiore, &c. Sections of 
these moraines show how they were piled the one upon the other; how the 
building up of one line of lateral moraine was followed by its partial destruction on 
another forward movement of the ice, and the throwing down of another moraine 
upon it. Then were formed many of the smaller lakes, remains of which lie amid 
the débris thrown out into the plain. The glaciers retained this size for a very con- 
siderable time, and then apparently very rapidly retreated to far within the moun- 
tains, but still for another considerable period their dimensions were much larger 
than those of the present time, into which they seem to have again rather rapidly 
shrunk, 
Passing from the glacial action displayed in the outer Alps to that in the 
Himalayas, we find ample evidence of a period of great extension of such conditions, 
first in the erratics of the Attock plain and the Potwar,! lying fifty to sixty miles 
from the gorge of the Indus at Torbela. We have again the fact that in Baltistan, 
in the Indus valley, glaciers have twice descended far beyond their present limits, 
first down to Scardo itself, and then to some thirty miles below their present limits ; 
while the glaciers of Nanga Purbet, towering above the Indus some 22,000 feet, 
must have descended into the bed of that river. Even allowing that the Potwar 
was not formerly a lacustrine basin, the great débacles from the mountains would 
have been sufficient to convey erratics fixed in ice to where they now lie. Cata- 
clysms of the present time, caused by glacial obstructions, have raised the level of 
the Indus on the plain above Attock so much as eighty feet. When these glaciers 
were more than double their present size, gigantic floods must have often taken 
place, and formed boulder deposits high above present levels: such high level gravels 
are to be seen not only in the Potwar, but also in the Naoshera Dhun on the 
Rajaurie Tawi River, containing boulders of nummulitic limestone and other rocks 
of the Pir Punjal on the north. 
Again, north of the Chatadhar ridge, small glaciers, five to six miles in length, 
at one time filled the lateral valleys, descending towards the Chenab River to about 
5,000 feet ; and a very perfect moraine occurs in one valley. This ground must be 
very similar to that which has been described by Theobald as occurring in the 
adjacent Kangra district? on the flanks of the Dhaoladhar ridge. Similar small 
glaciers existed, I believe, in the valleys of the Kajnag range, but I think that 
neither in this range nor in Budrawa did they ever descend into the main valleys; 
but the existence of these glaciers, together with the large snow-beds, had much to 
do with the formation of the high-level gravel-beds and fans through which the 
Jhelum and Chenab have since cut their way. 
In fact, examples of the former extension of glaciers are wide-spread along the 
chain of the Himalayas from west to east. True moraines, and moraine-mounds, at 
16,000 feet on the north side of the Baralasa pass, attest the presence of glaciers 
on the elevated plain of Rukshu, where now the snow-line is over 20,000 feet.® 
Drew gives much valuable information regarding their former size. On the east, in 
Sikkim, Sir Joseph Hooker ® has described moraines of great height (700 feet) and 
extent.© Still further south and east, in the Naga Hills, a short period of greater 
1 A. Verchére, J. Asiat. S. Bengal, 1867, pp. 113-114; Theobald, Records of the 
Geological Society of India, 1877, p. 140. ? Ibid. 1874, p. 86. 
3 North of the Karakoram, in that now arid country, great moraines are found in 
the valleys that descend into the Karakash, in the neighbourhood of the Sujet pass, 
17,600 feet. (Letter and Sketch, by Mr. Harold Godwin-Austen.) 
+ The Jummoo and Kashmir Territories. 5 Himalayan Journals, vol. i. p. 221. 
® The equivalents, although very small, of such moraines are to be seen in the 
Alps on the Simplon jutting out into the valley. 
